Radeon HD 7990 vs Radeon RX 540

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 7990 and Radeon RX 540, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 7990 stacks up against Radeon RX 540, check out specs charts below.

Radeon RX 540 is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon RX 540 is only used in laptop graphics. It has lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon RX 540 here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 7990 Radeon RX 540
Power consumption (TDP) 375 Watt 65 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 8-pin 1x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 3 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors 1x DVI, 4x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 7990 has 476% more power consumption, than Radeon RX 540.
  • Both video cards are using PCIe 3.0 x16 interface connection to a motherboard.
  • Radeon RX 540 has 1 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 7990.
  • Radeon HD 7990 is used in Desktops, and Radeon RX 540 - in Laptops.
  • Radeon HD 7990 is build with GCN 1.0 architecture, and Radeon RX 540 - with Polaris.
  • Radeon HD 7990 is manufactured by 28 nm process technology, and Radeon RX 540 - by 14 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 7990 and Radeon RX 540 is 6000 MHz.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 35−40 14−16
ultra / 1080p 21−24 8−9
QHD / 1440p 16−18 3−4
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 60−65 30−33
medium / 1080p 40−45 18−20
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7990 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 140% more, than Radeon RX 540.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 7990 Radeon RX 540
Architecture GCN 1.0 Polaris
Code name Malta Polaris 12
Type Desktop Laptop
Release date 24 April 2013 21 March 2017
Pipelines 2048 512
Core clock speed 950 MHz
Boost Clock 1000 MHz 1219 MHz
Transistor count 4,313 million 1,500 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 14 nm
Texture fill rate 128.0 39.01
Floating-point performance 2x 4,096 gflops 1,248 gflops
Length 307 mm
Memory bus width 384 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 6000 MHz 6000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 288.0 GB/s 96 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX 12 (11_1) 12.0
Shader Model 5.1 5.0
OpenGL 4.6 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan 1.2.131
FreeSync +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 459 Mh/s
Laptop size large
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 44 Mh/s
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